u/Apprehensive_Cry5877

A memory floated up-

One of the last Masses of June 26 I went to:

Seeing two female nums aged 60s-70s literally with their mouths hanging open standing two feet from the bishop who had said the Mass and making conversation/flirting with/adulating him.

This was after the Mass when people were hanging around outside the church and in the entryway.

Completely grotesque.

Caked on makeup and cheaply dyed hair, decked out in their finest clothes and jewelry, and literally salivating because they thought that they were communing with the high echelon of the social-ecclesiastical hierarchy.

Finding the bishop sexy because he was ecclesiastically powerful.

To me it cemented that “there’s no there there” in Opus Dei.

These women had been local directors for years, had run schools, deeply involved in both Saint Raphael and Saint Gabriel spiritual direction (“chats”)… given the “initial formation” to many nums and supers.

How is Opus Dei “personal formation” (chats) leading people to holiness when this is who we have in charge?

Answer: it’s not and it simply can’t.

It’s run by people who value power and social status. And who don’t have a solid integrated celibate identity.

The advisory had been getting complaints about these two being overly controlling directors for decades. It had just kept moving them from one director role to another.

Allegedly because these women “didn’t want to do anything else” beside lead (blame them). But really I think because “they got things done” and “people whistled with them”.

Yuck.

Sayonara, sweethearts.

Could someone who has the document in non-pdf format please feed this into GoogleTranslate or DeepL and post it here?

It’s a very valuable piece- a leak of opus Dei’s own data about the number of members worldwide (much smaller than what they claim!).

But this is a pdf so there’s no way for us to easily translate this document on the internet. (Today on ol)

Thanks in advance

https://www.opuslibros.org/nuevaweb/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=30161

In a comment in a recent post, there was a report that 1.5 years ago, as part of the Statutes revision, there was a change to the regulations about supernumerary chats. It seems from the reasoning behind this that the same change was probably made for Saint Michael work as well (?). Can anyone confirm.

This is a significant change which fundamentally destroys the initial purpose of the chat.

So it is a major reform, at least on paper.

It means that all the exes who have written to the Vatican about the chat as an abuse have succeeded in changing something.

The change is: as of 1.5 years ago, the local council cannot receive the chats of the supernumeraries they govern. The chats have to be heard by some other numerary (or associate).

Background Context: the Vatican has been trying since at least 2010 to make Opus Dei separate the governance from the spiritual direction/chat (because of the canons about manifestations of conscience in the Code of Canon Law, and the theological principles behind those; and because members and ex-members have kept writing to the Vatican saying that it is still going on).

This report is from France.

Can anyone add info from other regions and from sm work?

Particularly with the Numeraries, the original purpose of the chat as set up by JME was to garner personal information that he could then *use* to make decisions about governance/staffing. So this would be major if that is no longer being done.

I have not seen this reported on Opuslibros or by anyone else on here, so I’m wondering if it’s a change that only was made for the supernumeraries (a Vatican-facing superficial change) …

but the fact that it was explained internally to current members as being required by Opus Dei’s revision of the Statutes implies that it is across the board for all member types.

ETA: Someone has confirmed in a sub-comment here that in Brazil Numeraries who are the director of a center of numerary assistants and also are administrators (the work supervisors of the nunerary assistants) are no longer allowed to hear the chats of the numerary assistants of that center / whom they supervise.

Still waiting for information about other member-types (Numeraries and associates, and their local councils).

ETA#2. In another sub-comment a current numerary in Spain says supernumeraries are still doing chats with their local council members. It appears that perhaps the new regulation of 1.5 years ago is being carried out in some places but not others. Or perhaps that globally it started being implemented 1.5 years ago but then that stopped because the Statutes were not ratified by Francis before he died and recently Leo has said he’s still studying the proposed Statutes.

I can’t believe I didn’t see any news about this case! I read the headlines of a Manhattan-based newspaper every day and there has been nothing that I’ve noticed.

I just happened to find out about these murders and the sabotage of the investigation tonight, because I habitually watch true crime documentaries and I happened to try this one out without knowing what it was.

(Documentary is Killing Grounds.)

CAN’T BELIEVE THE CORRUPTION.

So infuriating and shocking.

Unbelievable that this kind of thing is still happening in the 2010s-2020s.

Plus I just read up on Spota and McPartland and Burke and the recent shenanigans of the latter two, and the fact that Burke couldn’t be prosecuted for his most recent arrest because the arresting officers themselves were too corrupt to be credible witnesses.

DUDE, what is wrong with LI?!

I can’t even.